It’s clear from the opening scene, a flurry of activity as street vendors proffer nosegays and buskers perform amid the arrival of opera patrons, that the creative team, under precise direction by Christopher Clark, pulled out all the stops. Not only is this “My Fair Lady” a visual treat, but the production excels with beautiful vocals and flows with efficient authority.
DeLaney Westfall makes a charming Eliza, balancing headstrong spunk with touching vulnerability. Westfall should command the stage from the first moment, and she’s a bit lost amid the bustle of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” but she begins to radiate in “Just You Wait.” She possesses a soaring soprano to pull off the big finales of numbers like “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Show Me.” The role requires her to get two English accents exactly right, and Westfall doesn’t disappoint.
Unparalleled for its unsentimentallity, “My Fair Lady” requires just the right sort of curmudgeonly Henry Higgins, and Mark Knowles competently fills the role. For a distinguished phonetician, Knowles’ elocution is mushy, but his talk-songs, which he wisely chooses to not monologue to music, are splendid. He proves to be a skilled actor in a demanding role. The stiff camaraderie between Knowles and Bruce Bredeson, terrific as his fellow bachelor Pickering, is just right.
As Eliza’s besotted suitor Freddy, Adam Dietlein sings a beautiful, stunning rendition of “On the Street Where You Live.” Dispelling concern that a theater associate would land the showcase role, Dietlein leaves the audience wishing he had been written a second solo equaling the lushly romantic song — an impossible task without divine intervention.
David W. Stensrud is a spirited and jovial Alfred P. Dolittle. Stensrud inhabits the role of Eliza’s raffish father with great aplomb, making “With a Little Bit of Luck” and “Get Me to the Church on Time” yet two additional high points.
Also impressing in their roles are JaNae Gibbs Cottam as the prim housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, and Darla Davis (the company’s only single-cast performer) as Mrs. Higgins, Henry’s exasperated mother.
While Lerner-Loewe purists will miss the full score, clipped here to lighten the show’s usual three-hour length, the essential elements of the soaring melodies are intact. Arguably, “Rain in Spain,” Eliza’s first triumph, was overly abridged. The orchestrations, albethey taped, are full and pleasing.
The carefully cluttered set of Higgins’ study, well appointed with a speech professor’s period contraptions that are used to great effect, fluidly rises from the stage floor. Each scene change is made quickly and staged imaginatively, showing Clark is no stranger to in-the-round theater-directing.
Jenny Barlow’s choreography is efficient and stylized, though the wonderfully sounding ensemble’s dancing is too often unpolished. “My Fair Lady” taxes the resources of regional theaters, but there could easily be more volume (and more seam pressing) to Suzanne Carling’s Cecil Beaton-derived costuming, though many of the show’s signature flourishes are noted.
Even with its blemishes here and there, Hale’s “My Fair Lady” is a joy and highly recommended — and would that all musicals could fare as grand.
SALT LAKE CITY — The Grand Theatre will be taking audiences off to see the Wizard, the wonderful “Wizard of Oz.”
The MGM classic of L. Frank Baum’s tale starring Judy Garland is a pop-culture iceberg. “There’s no place like home,” “I’ll get you, my pretty,” “Lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my!” — who hasn’t used a quote from the much-loved family film? And each of the Harold Arlen-E.Y. Harburg songs is included in the American songbook of treasured standards, with “Over the Rainbow” topping the American Film Institute’s list of best cinema songs.
But successful translating of the film to the stage has proved tricky.
“For community-level theaters, it’s a hard show to pull off,” said director Porter Williams. “There’s a lot of costumes, and there’s some technical effects that are really daunting. Trying to work around them without making them feel underwhelming is really difficult. We’ve struggled with that, but I think we’ve come out on the good side.”
His confidence is a result of working closely with the show’s creative and technical team, devising some innovative solutions to the inherent challenges and a recognition that if they “tried to recreate the movie aesthetically, we would fail.
“Respecting the icons of the show without being slaves to them has been the balance throughout the production process,” Williams said. “When people come see the show, it’s going to be instantly recognizable but it’s going to feel very different. The heart of the show is the same, but visually the show is quite different. I just got to see the head of Oz yesterday for the first time, and it’s really cool. We’ve also done some really innovative work with projections, and for Salt Lake it’s pretty groundbreaking.”
Beyond the pyrotechnics, multiple sets and costumes, and the indelible imagery from the 1939 Oscar-winner, what has been Williams' biggest challenge?
“Toto," he said with a laugh. "Getting her to run to Dorothy predictably. The first time Toto did it on stage there was a huge cheer from the cast. It involved a lot of treats and a lot of practice.”
The 30-member cast includes 12 child actors and local favorite Max Robinson playing the Wizard.
“As a young director who grew up seeing nearly every Max Robinson performance at Pioneer Theatre, it was overwhelming to consider directing him,” Williams said. “But he has been great to work with and he makes an excellent Wizard.”
After the opening of “Wizard of Oz,” it will be decided if Williams receives Cowardly Lion’s badge of courage — or if his goal should have been the award given by the wizard to Scarecrow.
WEST VALLEY CITY — It can be an intimidating challenge to restage a record-setting, classic musical that won six Tonys and eight Oscars for the subsequent film version.
But director Chris Clark has a firm vision for Hale Centre Theatre’s “My Fair Lady.” He found vitality in the musical’s source, the George Bernard Shaw play, “Pygmalion.”
“I was more inspired by the play, ‘Pygmalion,’ than I was ‘My Fair Lady,’ the movie,” Clark said. “ ‘My Fair Lady’ is really just ‘Pygmalion’ with some amazing songs added on to it.”
While it’s widely known that the British playwright’s acclaimed 1912 play begat the musical, the general public is less aware of a 1938 film of “Pygmalion” that was a financial and critical success, winning an Oscar for best screenplay and three other nominations.
“It’s just such a terrific play,” Clark said. “It has such a great message, and it’s so well written. The play is so witty and the characters are so funny and clever.”
Clark worked to incorporate an authentic “spirit of the place” into the production. For the past six years, he has led student theater tours to London. Knowing he would be directing “My Fair Lady, he visited the play’s various locations during last year’s excursion, taking notes and photographs that influenced his staging.
The story revolves around Eliza Doolittle, a coarse, working-class flower peddler, who agrees to take speech lessons from phonetician Henry Higgins and become transformed, as part of a wager, from a “squashed cabbage leaf” to pass as a duchess. Eliza succeeds so well, however, that she outgrows her social station and — in a development added to the musical — even manages to get Higgins to fall in love with her.
“We don’t here have the same view of the class system that has been so prevalent in England, but the play is about self-improvement,” Clark said. “It’s about seeing beneath the surface and rising above and improving our individual circumstances.”
With some critics arguing that it is “the perfect musical,” “My Fair Lady” is viewed as one of the most intelligent romantic comedies ever produced. Shaw’s brilliant, adapted dialogue is a perfect amalgamation of well-honed wit and barbed satire, and the script closely follows the original thoughtful and poignant story.
The “My Fair Lady” score, by the incomparable Alan Jay Lerner-Fredrick Lowe team that also crafted “Camelot” and “Gigi,” adds to the musical’s richness. The numerous now-classics include “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Show Me,” “Get Me to the Church on Time” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”
Each of the tender ballads with soaring melodies and quirky charm songs are intact in the production, but Clark worked with the musical’s copyright holder to “streamline” the show from a three-hour running time to just over two hours.
“Most people won’t notice the changes,” he said. “The show moves very quickly; the story is told with an urgency. It’s great for a modern audience.”
Rarely have so many minutes in a theater been passed as enjoyably as with “My Fair Lady.”
At the BYU Young Company theater for youngsters production of the award-winning book, “The 100 Dresses,” audiences will learn about judging others by their appearance, bullying and being an “upstander” versus a bystander.
“The story has the potential to motivate us to do kind things to others, to have true compassion,” said director Julia Ashworth. “It explores issues like what does it mean to be a friend to others and what friendship looks like.”
Based on the Newbery Honor-winning classic children’s book by Connecticut children’s author Eleanor Estes, the new 50-minute stage adaptation was scripted by internationally regarded playwright Mary Hall Surface, a Helen Hayes Award winner for excellence in theater.
The "100 Dresses" main character, Wanda Petronski, a poor immigrant from Poland, just wants to be liked by the other girls in her class, so she tells them about her collection of 100 dresses. The other kids don’t believe it, and they tease her relentlessly. But there is Madeline, the one girl trying to do the right thing and stick by Wanda.
“Everyone has been in Maddie’s situation,” wrote one teenager following a previous “100 Dresses” staging in Seattle. “Everyone has faced peer pressure. These characters tell us that we, like them, can make the right choice next time.”
“Redemption is one of the main themes,” Ashworth said “Madeline discovers that there is no do-over, but she can do better in the future.”
While this story is set in 1944, “the issues are identical to what we still face today,” she added. “Bullying is very prevalent and takes place all around us. There is also a lesson for adults on how we can exclude others just because of their differences.”
The “100 Dresses” company collected more than 100 dresses to donate to local charities, and many are on display adjacent to the theater.
Following the Pardoe Theatre staging, the eight-member cast of BYU theater students will take the show on tour to up to 40 schools throughout Utah and Salt Lake counties. At each staging, the cast will also hold workshops with students to review the themes of the production and will encourage students to also collect up to 100 dresses to donate to local charities.
“We are hoping that these dresses will not just be everyday dresses but special-occasion dresses that are more needed in these communities,” Ashworth said.
